Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 7, 1994 TAG: 9411070070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
The new pension rules affect all state employees - highway workers, college professors, troopers and others - who retire after July 1. But because judges are older as a group and often work past age 60 or 65, they may feel a greater pinch.
Oddly, the longer state workers wait to retire under the new system, the smaller their pensions will be.
``If it's just a matter of now or a few months from now, why not?'' said Norfolk Circuit Judge Thomas McNamara, who is retiring March 1.
The cuts will be harsher for retirees who choose survivor benefits - those who want wives or husbands to get benefits after they die. The cuts will be worst for retirees who are much older than their spouses.
McNamara, whose term doesn't expire until 2000, is 69; his wife is a few years younger. If McNamara retires after July 1, his pension would drop $168 a month, or $2,016 a year. After Aug. 1, it would drop $220 a month, or $2,640 a year.
Another Norfolk circuit judge, Robert W. Stewart, 64, announced his retirement last month after getting a new eight-year appointment.
Stewart said he wavered on when to retire, but the new pension system ``tipped the scale in that direction.''
Stewart, who has served 18 years on the Norfolk bench, said he can't understand why pensions will get smaller under the new system. ``You would think it would be the other way around.''
Retirement officials say this has to do with calculations of present value.
``Logically, when you first look at it, it doesn't make sense,'' said Bo Harris, deputy director of the Virginia Retirement System. ``But when you analyze it on a present value basis, it does.''
Many judges did not find out about the change until a judicial conference in May. Before then, the retirement system made little effort to spread the news.
Officials at the retirement system say the change has been in the works since state officials re-examined actuarial tables in 1991, so workers had plenty of time to make a decision about retirement. The General Assembly even delayed the effective date one year to give workers more time.
Judges, however, were so surprised at hearing the pension news in May that they appointed an ad hoc committee, chaired by Circuit Judge Nelson T. Overton of Hampton, to look into it.
``They're saying they notified us,'' Overton said, ``but if they did, I missed it.''
Harris said he does not expect a rash of retirements because of the new rules because most state retirees - 89 percent - don't take survivor benefits.
by CNB